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Built on ISFDB, Wikipedia, Wikidata and Open Library. Curated reading orders carry their reasoning on the page; the rest follow publication order. Data sources & licenses

© Loreful · data: ISFDB · CC BY

More like Ars Longa

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Mood

The mood the book leaves you in.

  • The reading experience is propelled by journeys, exploration, and physical risk; excitement and forward momentum dominate over dread or introspection.
  • Joy and loss are deliberately mixed; the resolution grants characters something real while taking something else away, leaving warmth and sorrow together.
  • The book demands work from the reader — dense prose, difficult structure, unfamiliar ideas, or morally uncomfortable material — as part of its intended effect.
  • Grim events, cruelty, or despair dominate the atmosphere, and the book does not soften them with comfort or comic relief.
  • The atmosphere is quietly unsettling — wrongness, unease, and the uncanny pervade the book without necessarily escalating into overt horror.
  • The book is built to move the reader; character feeling is foregrounded and major scenes aim at a strong emotional response.
  • Humor is a primary aim and the prose plays for laughs — comic situations, wit, or dialogue produce sustained comedy, not occasional levity.
  • The book insists that things can improve; effort and decency are shown to matter, and the arc bends toward better outcomes even through hardship.
  • The book teaches as it goes — real facts, history, science, or craft are conveyed in enough depth that learning is part of the reading experience.
  • The book is designed to uplift and motivate, presenting perseverance or achievement in a way that invites the reader to aspire or act.
  • The overall register is cheerful and easygoing; stakes are kept gentle and the book avoids dwelling on pain or dread.
  • Withheld information drives the experience; the book sustains enigmas and secrets the reader wants resolved, whatever its genre.
  • The book is contemplative and inward-looking, giving more weight to thought, memory, and meaning than to external events.
  • The book works as comfort reading — low tension, a soothing pace, and an atmosphere the reader can unwind in.
  • Grief, loss, or melancholy set the dominant register, and the book lets sorrow stand rather than resolving it into comfort.
  • Sustained suspense is the point; the book keeps the reader braced for what happens next through danger, pressure, or impending revelation.
  • Playful invention and charm define the register — fanciful conceits, light absurdity, and a narration that delights in its own oddity.

About

What the story runs on.

  • Stories in which a machine intelligence — an AI, computer mind, or sentient program — is a central character or the story's driving problem.
  • Stories in which extraterrestrial beings are central — as characters, cultures, or the object of the plot.
  • Stories driven by deliberate modification of genomes — designer organisms, engineered humans, and the consequences of remaking life.
  • Stories about venturing into space to explore — survey missions, astronauts, and the frontier of the unknown beyond Earth.
  • Stories about settling other planets or habitats — founding, sustaining, and governing colonies off Earth.
  • Stories about minds with paranormal abilities — telepathy, telekinesis, precognition, empathy — and how societies handle those who have them.
  • Stories in which staying alive against nature, catastrophe, or scarcity is the central problem.
  • Stories of growing up — a young protagonist crossing from childhood into adult knowledge and responsibility.
  • Stories about who a character truly is — self-discovery, doubled lives, and the search for a self.
  • Stories driven by maneuvering for power — factions, conspiracies, and statecraft conducted in shadow.
  • Stories about rising against rulers — uprisings, resistance movements, and revolutions and their aftermaths.
  • Stories in which war itself is the subject — combat, occupation, and what warfare does to soldiers and civilians.

Shelf

Where it sits in the library.

    • Fiction built on magic or other supernatural elements that have no scientific explanation.
    • Secondary-world fantasy at large scale, where the fate of nations or the world turns on the protagonists' struggle.
    • Fantasy set in a recognizably modern city or contemporary world where the supernatural intrudes on everyday life.
    • Fantasy that blends in horror's atmosphere and imagery, keeping a fantastical frame around grim or frightening material.
    • Action-driven fantasy following warriors or rogues with personal stakes against sorcerous threats, rather than world-spanning conflicts.
    • Fantasy set in a real historical period or a close analogue of one, with magic woven into the era.
    • Fantasy in which protagonists cross from the ordinary world into another world through a portal or similar passage.
    • Fiction that retells or reworks a traditional fairy tale in a new form or setting.
    • Fantasy drawing directly on myths, legends, and folklore, retelling them or building on their figures and logic.
    • Fantasy of ghosts, vampires, shapeshifters, psychics, and similar phenomena, usually set in an otherwise ordinary world.
    • Fiction mixing science-fictional trappings with overtly magical or impossible elements in one setting.
    • Low-stakes fantasy emphasizing comfort, community, and everyday pleasures over conflict and peril.
    • Speculative fiction of pervasive moral ambiguity, violence, and cynicism that rejects heroic conventions — fantasy and SF alike.
      • Fiction that extrapolates from science and technology — future societies, space travel, or speculative inventions — within at least nominally natural laws.
      • Science fiction of interstellar scope — starships, galactic polities, and adventure across star systems.
      • Science fiction committed to scientific rigor, where technical plausibility constrains the story.
      • Science fiction centered on armed forces and warfare, told largely from a military point of view.
      • Science fiction of networked, corporate-dominated near futures, pairing high technology with social decay.
      • Science fiction styled on nineteenth-century steam-powered technology, often in a Victorian or pseudo-Victorian setting.
      • Fiction depicting an oppressive or catastrophic society, presented as a warning.
      • Fiction set after civilization's collapse, following survivors in the ruins of the old world.
      • Fiction in which characters move between past and future, and the mechanics or consequences of that travel drive the plot.
      • Fiction exploring a world where a historical event went differently and history diverged from ours.
      • Science fiction about humanity's first encounter and communication with an alien intelligence.
      • Science fiction in which extraterrestrial forces attack or occupy Earth and humanity resists.
      • Fiction whose primary aim is to frighten or unsettle the reader through dread, menace, or the monstrous.
      • Horror of vast, indifferent, incomprehensible entities before which humanity is insignificant, in the Lovecraft tradition.
      • Horror of decaying houses, buried family secrets, and oppressive atmosphere in the Gothic literary tradition.
      • Horror centered on hauntings and the returning dead.
      • Horror located in the mind — paranoia, obsession, and unreliable perception rather than external monsters.
      • Horror built around the reanimated dead and survival amid their outbreaks.
      • Horror defined by explicit, transgressive gore that refuses to cut away from violence.
      • Speculative fiction of the strange and uncanny that resists both natural explanation and standard genre categories.
      • Fiction organized around solving a crime or puzzle, typically following an investigator toward the identification of a culprit.
      • A puzzle-first mystery that lays out clues so the culprit's identity can be deduced before the reveal.
      • Crime fiction of moral ambiguity, fatalism, and hard-edged style, set among the corrupt and the doomed.
      • A mystery following the realistic routines of police work — forensics, interviews, and case-building.
      • A gentle mystery with an amateur sleuth, a small community, and violence kept off the page.
      • A mystery set in a past era, where the investigation works within that period's methods and society.
      • Fast-paced fiction driven by imminent danger, pursuit, or high-stakes conspiracy, built to sustain tension.
      • A thriller of espionage — agents, tradecraft, and intelligence services in conflict.
      • A thriller centered on lawyers and the courtroom, where litigation carries the suspense.
      • A thriller driven by detailed contemporary or near-future technology, often military or scientific.
      • A thriller whose tension comes from mental states and manipulation between characters rather than external action.
      • Fiction whose central plot is a romantic relationship and its development toward an emotionally satisfying resolution.
      • Romance in which one or both partners are supernatural beings, blending fantasy elements into the love story.
      • A fantasy-romance hybrid in which the romantic arc and the fantasy plot carry equal weight.
      • Romance set in a past era, with courtship shaped by the period's society and manners.
      • Romance set in the present day, without supernatural or historical elements.
      • Fiction set in a real past period, where the historical setting materially shapes characters and events.
        • General and literary fiction emphasizing prose style, character interiority, or formal ambition over genre plot conventions.
        • Fiction in a realistic world where magical events occur and are treated as ordinary, in the tradition of Latin American literature.
        • Fiction that ridicules people, institutions, or society in order to criticize them.
        • Fiction of dreamlike, irrational imagery and logic that breaks from realistic representation.
        • Fiction that plays with narrative convention through metafiction, fragmentation, and self-reference.
        • Fiction propelled by journeys, exploration, and physical peril, where action and survival carry the plot.
        • Adventure fiction of ships and seafaring — naval engagements, voyages, and life at sea.
        • Fiction of the American frontier West — gunmen, ranchers, and lawmen, typically in the late nineteenth century.
        • Fiction centered on soldiers, campaigns, and the experience of warfare, historical or imagined.
          • Fiction written primarily to amuse, using comedic situations, wit, or parody as its organizing principle.
            • Multi-generational fiction following a family or dynasty across decades, with inheritance and kinship as the through-line.
              • Fiction whose world runs on explicit game mechanics — levels, stats, and skills that characters can see and exploit.
                • Fiction about costumed or superpowered heroes and their conflicts with comparable villains.

                Practical

                How long a commitment, whether it stands alone, and whether it has finished.

                Tap a chip to ask for it · tap again to rule it out · once more to clear. Numbers show what would be left.

                • Cover of Radiance
                  Radiance

                  Catherynne M. Valente · standalone novel · 2015

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                  Severin Unck's father is a famous director of Gothic romances in an alternate 1986 in which talking movies are still a daring innovation due to the patent-hoarding Edison family. Rebelling against her father's films of passion, intrigue, and spirits from beyond, Severin starts making documentaries, traveling through space and investigating the levitator cults of Neptune and the lawless saloons of Mars. For this is not our solar system, but one drawn from classic science fiction in which all the planets are inhabited and we travel through space on beautiful rockets. Severin is a realist in a fantastic universe. But her latest film, which investigates the disappearance of a diving colony on a watery Venus populated by island-sized alien creatures, will be her last. Though her crew limps home to earth and her story is preserved by the colony's last survivor, Severin will never return.

                • Cover of Ruled Britannia
                  Ruled Britannia

                  Harry Turtledove · standalone novel · 2002

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                  Ruled Britannia is an alternate history novel by Harry Turtledove, first published in hardcover by New American Library in 2002.

                • Cover of Deus Irae
                  Deus Irae

                  Philip K. Dick & Roger Zelazny · standalone novel · 1976

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                  Deus Irae is a post-apocalyptic science fiction novel written by two American authors; it was started by Philip K. Dick and finished with the help of Roger Zelazny. It was published in 1976. The novel's title, Deus irae, means 'God of Wrath' in Latin; the title is a play on words on the phrase Dies Irae, meaning 'Day of Wrath' or 'Judgment Day'. The novel was based on Dick's short stories "The Great C" and "Planet for Transients".

                • Cover of Station Eleven
                  Station Eleven

                  Emily St. John Mandel · standalone novel · 2014

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                  "Set in the days of civilization's collapse, Station Eleven tells the story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking everything for art and humanity. One snowy night a famous Hollywood actor slumps over and dies onstage during a production of King Lear. Hours later, the world as we know it begins to dissolve. Moving back and forth in time — from the actor's early days as a film star to fifteen years in the future, when a theater troupe known as the Traveling Symphony roams the wasteland of what remains — this suspenseful, elegiac, spellbinding novel charts the strange twists of fate that connect five people: the actor, the man who tried to save him, the actor's first wife, his oldest friend, and a young actress with the Traveling Symphony, caught in the crosshairs of a dangerous self-proclaimed prophet." (source: Goodreads.com)

                • Cover of The Blue Ant Trilogy
                  The Blue Ant Trilogy

                  series · 3 books · 2003

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                  Hubertus Bigend is a fictional character appearing in the third trilogy of novels of science fiction and literary author William Gibson. Bigend is the antihero of Gibson's Pattern Recognition (2003), Spook Country (2007) and Zero History (2010). In an interview Gibson says "I've always had a sense of Bigend as someone who presents himself as though he knows what's going on, but who in fact doesn't. It's just my sense of the subtext of the character: he's bullshitting himself, at the same time as he's bullshitting all of us."

                • Cover of Tono-Bungay
                  Tono-Bungay

                  H. G. Wells · standalone novel · 1909

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                  Tono-Bungay is a realist semiautobiographical novel written by H. G. Wells and first published in book form in 1909. It has been called "arguably his most artistic book". It had been serialised before book publication, both in the United States, in The Popular Magazine, beginning in the issue of September 1908, and in Britain, in The English Review, beginning in the magazine's first issue in December 1908.

                • Cover of Galileo's Dream
                  Galileo's Dream

                  Kim Stanley Robinson · standalone novel · 2009

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                  Galileo's Dream (2009) is a science fiction novel with elements of historical fiction, written by Kim Stanley Robinson. In the book, 17th-century scientist Galileo Galilei is visited by far-future time travelers living on the Galilean moons of Jupiter. Italicized portions of text within the novel are "mostly from Galileo's writing or that of his contemporaries."

                • Cover of The Ghost from the Grand Banks
                  The Ghost from the Grand Banks

                  Arthur C. Clarke · standalone novel · 1990

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                  As the centennial of the Titanic's sinking approaches in 2012, two rival teams race to be the ones who raise a piece of the wreck from the floor of the Atlantic, one betting on brute engineering, the other on a wilder, more mathematical approach rooted in fractal geometry. Clarke weaves in a fictional newspaper editorial warning against disturbing the wreck at all, framing the expeditions as a test of the very hubris that sank the ship in the first place. A late Clarke novel that trades space opera for the ocean floor, with a running fascination with the Mandelbrot set along for the ride.

                • Cover of Big Planet
                  Big Planet

                  series · 2 books · 1952

                  completed

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                  Big Planet imagines an enormous, metal-poor world settled generations earlier by cultists, anarchists, and other Earth malcontents, whose low population density lets each of its societies calcify into its own petty, often brutal order; the story follows Claude Glystra, an Earth diplomat who crash-lands and must cross forty thousand miles of the planet's patchwork territories on foot to reach the one enclave still loyal to Earth. Jack Vance's 1957 novel — an early landmark of the fully realized planetary-romance setting — got a single sequel decades later, Showboat World, revisiting the same world without continuing Glystra's story.

                • Cover of Remake
                  Remake

                  Connie Willis · standalone novel · 1994

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                  Remake is a 1995 science fiction novel by Connie Willis. It was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1996.

                • Cover of Vermilion Sands
                  Vermilion Sands

                  series · 10 books · 1956

                  completed

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                  Vermilion Sands collects J. G. Ballard's linked short stories set in a decaying desert resort town for the wealthy and disaffected, somewhere between Palm Springs glamour and slow decline. The stories share the same setting and cast of artists, has-beens, and hangers-on rather than following one continuous plot, with recurring fixtures like sonic sculptures standing in for the collection's obsession with art made from leisure and boredom. First published in 1971, it's a mood piece more than a narrative series.

                • Cover of The Child Garden
                  The Child Garden

                  Geoff Ryman · standalone novel · 1989

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                  The Child Garden is a 1989 science fiction novel by Canadian writer Geoff Ryman.

                • Cover of The City, Not Long After
                  The City, Not Long After

                  Pat Murphy · standalone novel · 1989

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                  Half a generation ago, a gesture in the name of peace turned out to spread plague and disaster. In San Francisco, the survivors are heir to a city transformed. It is a haunted, dreaming place peopled with memories, and in a strange way nearly alive itself. And although it is only beginning to recover from near-ultimate disaster, the city is at risk again. An army of power-hungry men are descending on San Francisco. Teenagers Jax and Danny-boy must lead the fight for freedom using the only weapons they have - art, magic, and the soul of the city itself.

                • Cover of The Byworlder
                  The Byworlder

                  Poul Anderson · standalone novel · 1971

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                  From the front flap of the Gregg Press edition: "In The Byworlder, Poul Anderson sings the praises of the byworlders, a counterculture people who try to do their own thing in a regimented, near-future society. One of the byworlders, Skip Wayburn (a sigaroon, or 21st-century version of a bohemian drifter, craftsman, musician, and artist) make an intuitive connection with the emissary aboard the first interstellar starship orbiting Earth, a breakthrough that has been eluding the best efforts of the scientific establishment for three years. Wayburn alone knows why the alien has come, but no one in the establishment will listen to the byworlder, despite his terrifying message. ... This first American hardcover edition includes a new introduction on The Byworlder by the author."

                • Cover of Makers
                  Makers

                  Cory Doctorow · standalone novel · 2009

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                  Makers is a novel by Canadian-British science fiction author Cory Doctorow released in October 2009. It was nominated for the Prometheus Award.

                • Cover of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
                  Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom

                  Cory Doctorow · standalone novel · 2003

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                  Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom is a 2003 science fiction book, the first novel by Canadian author and digital-rights activist Cory Doctorow. It depicts people competing over how new technology is being used at Walt Disney World, in a post-scarcity world with an economy based on reputation. Concurrent with its publication by Tor Books, Doctorow released the entire text of the novel under a Creative Commons noncommercial license on his website, allowing the whole text of the book to be freely read and distributed without needing any further permission from him or his publisher.

                • Cover of Playground
                  Playground

                  Richard Powers · standalone novel · 2024

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                  Playground is a 2024 novel by Richard Powers, published on September 24, 2024, by W. W. Norton & Company. It received mostly positive reviews from critics. It was longlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize.

                • Cover of The Stardust Grail
                  The Stardust Grail

                  Yume Kitasei · standalone novel · 2024

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                  The Stardust Grail is a 2024 science fiction novel by Yume Kitasei. It tells the story of Maya, a retired art thief who embarks upon one last heist in order to save an alien species.

                • Cover of Alien Art
                  Alien Art

                  Gordon R. Dickson · standalone novel · 1973

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                  From 2002 hc copyright page: On the planet Arcadia, a young man and woman and a swamp otter join together to haul the otter's eleven hundred pound statue overland to meet the deadline of a prospective buyer from another planet.

                • Cover of Apollo Quartet
                  Apollo Quartet

                  series · 4 books · 2012

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                • Cover of Anima Rising
                  Anima Rising

                  Christopher Moore · standalone novel · 2025

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                  Anima Rising is a satirical historical fantasy novel by American author Christopher Moore. It was published by William Morrow and Company on May 13, 2025. It takes place in 1911 Vienna and features real historical figures such as Gustav Klimt, Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung as characters, as well as the classic fictional character the Bride of Frankenstein.

                • Cover of Something New Under the Sun
                  Something New Under the Sun

                  Alexandra Kleeman · standalone novel · 2021

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                  Something New Under the Sun is a 2021 novel by American writer Alexandra Kleeman. The novel takes place in the near future in which California has been rendered nearly uninhabitable by climate change.

                • Cover of Landscape with Invisible Hand
                  Landscape with Invisible Hand

                  M. T. Anderson · standalone novel · 2017

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                  When the vuvv first landed, it came as a surprise to aspiring artist Adam and the rest of planet Earth--but not necessarily an unwelcome one. Can it really be called an invasion when the vuvv generously offered free advanced technology and cures for every illness imaginable? As it turns out, yes. With his parents' jobs replaced by alien tech and no money for food, clean water, or the vuvv's miraculous medicine, Adam and his girlfriend, Chloe, have to get creative to survive.

                • Cover of The Light That Never Was
                  The Light That Never Was

                  Lloyd Biggle & Jr. · standalone novel · 1972

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                  From the back cover of the DAW first printing: ""Yes, but would you want your daughter to marry a Mesz?" Art critics are notoriously inhuman - and on Donov many of them were physically inhuman as well. Donov was a planet devoted to the arts. People came from all over the galaxy to attend its galleries and meet its artists. And many of its best artists were not human either. But when a rising tide of anti-alien pogroms and riots began zeroing in on Donov from out space, it became clear that there was a plot afoot that had nothing to do with art criticism. It had to do with planetary genocide."